10/28/2026
WHO WEEPS BY THE WATER: LATIN AMERICAN TALES FOR HALLOWEEN NIGHT
In New Orleans, we know a thing or two about ghosts. We give walking tours about them. We name bars after them. We leave the porch light on for the ones we love and pour a little out for the ones we've lost.
But long before I ever stood on a French Quarter balcony at midnight, I learned my fear in Spanish.
I learned it at the kitchen table, from women who knew exactly how to make a child come home before dark. I learned it from aunts on the porch, from grandmothers with rosaries in their laps, from the hush that fell over a room when someone said a name you weren't supposed to say too loudly.
Every Latin American country carries its own spirits. They walk the rivers, the cane fields, the mountain roads, and the cobblestones. They are not costumes. They are lessons... about love, about pride, about grief, about what happens when we stray too far from home.
So this Halloween, pull your chair a little closer. Let me introduce you to a few of them.
LA LLORONA, THE WEEPING WOMAN
MĂ©xico, Central America, and across the Americas
She is the one we all know. A beautiful woman, often called MarĂa, loved a man who left her. In a moment of grief and fury, she drowned her children in the river. When she understood what she had done, she followed them into the water.
She was turned away at the gates of heaven until she could find them. So she wanders every river, lake, and canal, dressed in white, weeping into the night. ¡Ay, mis hijos!
The rule was simple. If you hear a woman crying by the water, do not follow her. And in a city wrapped in the arms of the Mississippi, I sometimes wonder if she found her way here, too.
EL CADEJO, THE TWO DOGS OF THE NIGHT
Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and Nicaragua
This is the one I grew up with, the one that feels like home.
El Cadejo appears to people walking alone at night as a large dog with burning red eyes and hooves like a goat. There are two of them. The white Cadejo is a guardian, sent to walk beside travelers and protect them on dark roads. The black Cadejo is something else entirely... it hunts the drunk, the wicked, and the careless.
What I love about this story is its tenderness. Even in the dark, the tale says, something is watching over you. You only have to be worthy of it.
LA SIGUANABA, THE WOMAN WHO LURES
Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Costa Rica
From behind, she is the most beautiful woman you have ever seen. Long dark hair. A graceful walk. She appears near rivers and on lonely roads, usually to men who are out where they shouldn't be, with someone they shouldn't be with.
She calls to them. They follow. And when she finally turns around, her face is the face of a horse, or a bare skull, and the man runs until his mind breaks.
In some tellings, she was once a woman cursed for her infidelity. In others, she is simply justice with long hair. Either way, the abuelas told this one with a very specific look in their eyes, aimed squarely at the men in the room.
EL SOMBRERĂ“N, THE MAN IN THE ENORMOUS HAT
Guatemala
He is small, dressed all in black, with silver buttons, shiny boots, a guitar, and a hat so wide it shadows his whole body.
El SombrerĂłn falls in love with young women who have long hair and big eyes. He serenades them at their windows at night. He braids the manes of horses and mules in stables while everyone sleeps. And the girl he chooses stops eating, stops sleeping, and slowly fades for love of him.
In Guatemala, families would cut a daughter's hair or send her far away to break the spell. It is a love story and a warning wrapped in the same song.
EL SILBĂ“N, THE WHISTLER
Venezuela and Colombia
Out on the open plains, the llanos, they say you can hear him coming by his whistle. A rising, falling tune, like the notes of a scale.
Here is the terrifying part. If the whistle sounds close, he is far away. If it sounds far away... he is right beside you.
He was a son who did something unforgivable, cursed to wander forever carrying a sack of bones on his back. Families on the llanos still say that if you hear that whistle at night, you should not answer, and you should not wait to see.
LA CIGUAPA, THE WOMAN WITH BACKWARD FEET
Dominican Republic
Deep in the mountains of the Dominican Republic lives a wild woman with brown or blue skin and hair so long it covers her whole body like a cloak. She is beautiful, she is shy, and her feet point backward.
Try to track her, and her footprints lead you in the opposite direction. She only comes out at night, and those who look into her eyes, they say, are bewitched and never seen again.
La Ciguapa is part of the land itself. Untamed, uncatchable, and entirely her own. Honestly? I find her a little bit inspiring.
EL CHUPACABRAS, THE GOAT SUCKER
Puerto Rico, and then everywhere
The newest legend on this list, and proof that we never stop making them. In the mid-1990s, farmers in Puerto Rico began finding goats and chickens drained of blood, with small puncture wounds and no other trace. Witnesses described a spiny, gray, red-eyed creature that stood like a person and moved like nothing they had ever seen.
Within a few years, sightings spread through MĂ©xico, Central America, and the southern United States. El Chupacabras became a household name, a cartoon, a T-shirt, and a very real reason to lock the chicken coop.
A NOTE ON THE SEASON
Here is something I always want people to understand. In our cultures, the end of October and the beginning of November are not only about fear. They are about memory.
As Halloween gives way to DĂa de los Santos and DĂa de los Mu***os, our families build altars, visit cemeteries, cook favorite dishes for those who have passed, and invite them home again. In Guatemala, we fly giant kites in Sumpango and Santiago SacatepĂ©quez to carry messages to the dead. In MĂ©xico, the marigolds light the way.
The spirits in these stories frighten us. The spirits on our altars hold us. Both are part of how we live with the unseen.
And maybe that is why these legends feel so at home in New Orleans. This is a city that dances with its dead, that second lines them to their rest, that never quite lets them go. We understand each other.
TELL ME YOURS
Every family tells these stories a little differently. A town, a grandmother, a single detail changes everything. And I know there are so many more out there. La Mano Peluda. El Duende. La Patasola. El TĂo. The one your abuela only whispered.
So tell me. Who frightened you as a child? Which spirit walked your river, your road, your street? I want to hear your version.
Happy Halloween, New Orleans. Stay close to home tonight... and if you hear weeping by the water, keep walking.
With a second line in my step wherever the rhythm carries me, Karlita
